[roymurdock]

Love the exploration of Olmsted's idea of natural scenery "unbending" and untwisting the pent up anxiety inherent in urban life. To use landscape architecture to "sanitize" and heal the public.

NYC and Boston (and the US in general) are lucky to have had an architect of his caliber designing green spaces...we could use some more of those to catch up with Europe ;)

Also interesting idea here...correlates with talk is cheap...but wonder if there is a word or phrase that captures this idea from Bushnell, the Olmsted family pastor:

"The most important and constant influence that people exerted on each other, Bushnell believed, was not verbal, but rather a silent emanation of their real character that showed in their habitual conduct and made itself felt at a level below that of consciousness."

[cduzz]

I was walking around the Smithsonian National Zoo / "the zoo in washington DC" and it really struck me as being very much like parts of where I live now (inner-ring suburban boston) and behold, same dude.

It's amazing that the visual language so effective that a civilian like myself would even notice the correlation, and it's similarly amazing that these spaces were built in such a way that they're still consistent with each other and have survived even though I'm sure someone would love to put condos there.

[roymurdock]

Yeah he has a very unique, beautiful, and consistent visual language that really captures and conveys majesty. The emerald necklace around the charles is a top US treasure to be sure.

[roymurdock]

its like the christian version of karma or dharma